How to leverage LinkedIn as a showcase for Social Selling

Social Media has an impact on every aspect of a business including recruiting, PR, marketing, sales and more. LinkedIn, the most popular professional network, can help marketers and sales professionals to discover and build relationships with leads. Many buying professionals make use of a company’s website and social media presence throughout the buying decision to acquire contact and product information, get a sense of the company’s culture and reputation. LinkedIn is a fantastic platform to showcase such information.

The keys to marketing yourself and/or your business on LinkedIn include building an optimized LinkedIn account, building a network, receiving recommendations from employers and coworkers, creating content for industry thought leadership through LinkedIn Publishing, actively sharing useful and interesting content with your network and participating in LinkedIn groups.

LinkedIn has been likened to an online resume as it allows professionals to showcase their skills, accomplishments and professional ‘word of mouth’ reviews. Whether it be your personal LinkedIn page or your LinkedIn company page, it serves as a front door for other LinkedIn users to examine your experience and competencies, which could lead to future professional opportunities.

LinkedIn users generally enter the platform if they are looking for something specific. Whether it be searching for a new job, seeking potential job candidates or resource needed for their business, everyone is seeking something. With a well optimized account, your chances of being found in the appropriate context will increase. LinkedIn offers premium service packages (premium.linkedin.com) for job seekers, business owners, recruiters and sales professionals to help them to identify the contacts that they need. LinkedIn is a great platform for professionals to connect with the right prospects at the right time, engage with prospects and build a social presence through content marketing.

Content marketing is important because it can help you to attract and nurture new professional connections and leads for your business. Through an effective content marketing schedule, it will help you to keep your messaging in front of your contacts throughout the sales cycle and help them to gain an understanding of the value that you and your company provide. As they move along the sales pipeline, this will help you to save time as well as the cost of customer acquisition because you can interact with your leads on LinkedIn through inbound marketing. It will also help you to keep in touch with current clients and open the potential for repeat business.

Since social media is the digital version of ‘word-of-mouth’ it is important to build and nurture your network because your activity could result in your next lead or sale. The key takeaways are to begin with optimizing your LinkedIn account to meet personal and organizational objectives, implement an robust and effective content marketing strategy and measure the impacts of your time and effort on LinkedIn to direct your activity toward what works the best for social selling. Contact us today to learn more and receive personalized assistance on effectively leveraging LinkedIn!

Written by: Andrew C. Belton